Page 91 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Unit 5: Niccolo Machiavelli

authority, recognition of meritorious citizens, and opportunities for the ambitious to rise Notes
within the state based on ability. A well-ordered state was also one where the citizens knew
for certain the legal consequences of their actions. Hence, Machiavelli proposed a rational
legal system that eliminated arbitrariness, guaranteed legal equality, regularized procedures
for the redressal of grievances, prohibited retroactive laws, and executed laws efficiently and
vigorously.
• Machiavelli also formulated the “West’s first general theory of conspiracy”. He believed that
most political situations were conspiratorial or counter-conspiratorial in nature. In the Art of
War, he equated conspiracy with military combat, requiring surprise, secrecy, planning,
preparedness, flexibility, swiftness, decisiveness in execution, assessment of strengths and
weaknesses, and cunning. He also understood political and military leadership as being
identical. He founded modern military science, thus influencing those who followed him,
from Maurice of Nassau to Clausewitz.
• Machiavelli was one of the exponents of civic republicanism, inspiring subsequent theorists
from diverse standpoints like Jean Bodin (1529/30-1596), Hobbes, Harrington, Spinoza,
Montesquieu, Rousseau, Burke, Hegel and de Tocqueville. Machiavelli and his contemporary
Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) prescribed institutional and moralistic remedies to secure
and protect civic freedoms. A stable republic supported by patriotic citizens, who in turn
should place public good over private gain (especially the pursuit of wealth), refrain from
factional squabbles, and willingly fight for the defence of their country, guaranteed freedom.
Patriotism was sustained by the continual participation of citizens in civic affairs and religion,
other than Christianity. The crucial issue for Machiavelli was the possibility of civic virtu
among a citizenry in a commercial society. He looked upon the Swiss as having honour, but
they could not provide the rulers that Europe or Italy needed. The problem that confronted
Machiavelli also vexed Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) who accepted civility and cohesion as
mutually incompatible. However, the problem was solved with cities providing the first
element and the tribes the second. For Khaldun, the Turks, Arabs and Berbers provided an
inexhaustible supply of rulers and warriors who would complement the “uncohesive atomized
specialist of the productive urbanized and sedentarized world”.
• Machiavelli also emphasized the importance of a wise constitutional machinery alongside
civic virtu, as well as the importance of mixed constitutions as expressed in the writings of
Aristotle, Polybius and Aquinas while engaging in a polemic with Guicciardini. The last
preferred an Aristotelian, Venetian-Spartan aristocracy. Machiavelli contended that in a mixed
government the separate classes would, through the institutions of representation, limit one
another’s power, thereby ensuring liberty for all. This defence of limited government as a
necessary condition for safeguarding liberty started a tradition that continues even today.
Machiavelli was also convinced that the rule of law would supersede factional and private
interests, and hence he explored a constitution that would uphold anu preserve the rule of
law. In his opinion, a constitution with established institutions and procedures would partly
prevent usurpation. He also defended distribution of power with accountability which made
it possible to impeach any official of the state.
• Machiavelli was a keen and perceptive observer of the systems in the East, and according to
him these states contained ingredients which he thought to be crucial. The Eastern central
state was not an apex body within a complex pyramid of power. Both in law and otherwise,
there was sufficient dispersal of effective authority. As a result, society never got disrupted
nor rendered helpless. But the Eastern state had a strong centre, which, if destroyed, would
mean its end.
• Gramsci praised the greatness of Machiavelli for separating politics from ethics. Following
Croce’s description of “Marx as the Machiavelli of the proletariat”, Gramsci tried to analyze

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